best vintage over the last 40 years (since 1980) by region

Jayson_Cohen · July 19, 2021, 11:00pm

I’m reluctant to say “best” but for all three ‘89 and ‘96 were very very strong. For Chenin and SB I’d probably add 2008.

Pat_Martin · July 20, 2021, 12:19am

What about Rioja? I haven’t had many, but the ‘81s are spectacular. For more recent vintages, 85-87, 91, 94 and 01 were all excellent (with maybe the 91 my fav), but I bet the ‘best ever’ is pre-81.

Howard_Cooper · July 20, 2021, 12:23am

I picked 1991 for California Cab because a number of my favorite wineries made really strong wines. Ridge Monte Bello, Chateau Montelena, and Togni for example did really well. As I don’t drink overoaked and over-extracted Cabernet, I did not consider how wineries who make such wines did in various vintages. Not sure how to tell when they do “well.”

I squinted at 91 as well for Napa, but after pondering the issue for a while, I’m not sure I really have a better call. Maybe 94 for more even excellence, but that’s kind of splitting hairs. I do think that the 90s were probably the decade of greatest change, but I also think the 90s presented the greatest improvement, across the line, in vineyard management and consistency. While that may also have led to a steady push for riper wines and greater extraction in more new oak, I think there is some give and take. Mark you’re quite a bit older than me and so can speak to 70s cabs, but I always wonder, from my experience drinking a bunch of them at 30 plus years old, whether they achieved phenolic ripeness across the board. I’ve felt that with a good number of the rather famed wines from solid 70s vintages, the wines showed considerably higher alcohol and lower fruit concentration that even mid-late 80s vintages. Like 74 Mondavi reserve at 12.5% abv (which I absolutely believe) and very high acidity. That’s an anecdote against a generalization, but I can’t time travel.

While I appreciate the nod to 95 by another poster, I don’t think that’s going to get much of an agreement and hindsight is probably showing 96 to be a better vintage than 95. I’d wager most votes would place 91, 94, and 96 over 95, with 95 vying with 92 and 93 as good but not broadly great vintages. After 97, things shifted aggressively towards riper more extracted wines, and 2001-2002 “mega vintages” showed massive increases in extraction and in 2001, pretty big tannins under gobs of rich fruit and higher ABVs, which progressed through the 2000s.

I think 91 probably had some great things to offer across the board and was still early enough in the movement towards larger wines to remain on the correct side of the spectrum. A fun mental exercise.

Obviously, the purpose of this thread is to have fun and to learn from each other so I love the way you went through this kind of analysis. If we went back further, certainly 1970, 1974 and 1978 were great vintages. I can think of fabulous wines from each vintage. The 1970s were a neat period of discovery where I learned about a new producer with about every vintage. I remember wines like 1970 and 1973 BV Private Reserve and Sterling, 1973 Inglenook Cask, 1974 Sterling and Freemark Abbey Bosche, 1975 Chappellet, 1976 Jordan, Phelps and BV Private Reserve, and a lot of 1978s most notably the wines from Diamond Creek, Montelena and Heitz. About 5 years ago or so, my wine tasting group did a vertical of Chateau Montelena and even at that late date a 1978 Sonoma Cabernet was the consensus favorite.

What is interesting is that I cannot really think of what would be considered the great vintages of the 21st century. It seems as if the most heavily touted vintages are the hottest ones and then revisions cast doubt on those vintages a few years later. I am still waiting for revisionist history to say that the best vintage is 2011.

From the 1980s and 1990s, my short list was 1984 (the first Monte Bello I had ($20 a bottle)], 1985, 1991 and 1994. I will add in a personal favorite - I know that it is not generally considered a great vintage but back in the day I had an awful lot of really good 1980s.

Jayson_Cohen · July 20, 2021, 12:35am

What I would say is ‘81 and that we still don’t know if ‘91, ‘94-96, or even some more recent vintages will be at that level given how Tempranillo ages. But if you go back further, picking one vintage as the best in Rioja is I think impossible. Wines from the ‘20s are still drinking well as a friend reported the other day (on a ‘26 CVNE).

Patrick_Stella · July 20, 2021, 12:44am

Res burg --1999
Burgundy white - 1992
Bordeaux left bank - 1990 (2016 potential challenger)
Bordeaux right bank - 1990 ditto re 2016
Sauternes/Barsac - 2001
Germany - 2001
Champagne - 1996
Port 1994 (2011 perhaps?)
N rhone 1991

Fwiw I know it’s not the topic here, but 1990 is not far behind in a lot of these. Has any other year come close for being pretty good everywhere and great in a good number of regions ?

Leonard_A_Mauney · July 20, 2021, 1:08am

Agree with 1995 being stellar. The 1995 Pahlmeyer was a revelation. 1996 was also quite memorable. The 1996 Peter Michael Les Pavots was easily a classic wine.

Brian_S_t_o_t_t_e_r · July 20, 2021, 1:13am

What about Sonoma? Before 2018?

Howard_Cooper · July 20, 2021, 1:21am

Agree on 1990. How about 2010, 2015 and 2019.

RyanC · July 20, 2021, 1:26am

2005 too.

J_a_y_H_a_c_k · July 20, 2021, 1:46am

Good call. I have been debating with a friend of mine whether to open one of my 1994 Fonsecas in 2 weeks after we drink the Petrus he gave me, because his wife likes Port. I am afraid that it is still too young.

Barolo - 2001 - should be ready for my 90th Birthday.

Cali Cabs? I like 94 better than 91, but it is a winery by winery issue. 1991 Dominus is outstanding. 1994 Pahlmeyer is outstanding. But the correct answer is 2001 or 2007. The problem is that most of the contributors above do not like Cali Cabs so they pick years that are more Bordeaux-ish.

AND I thought everyone hated Parker. SO why does everyone agree that 1982 is the best year for left bank Bordeaux, when Parker called it while everyone else said it was mediocre.

And, for extra credit - - - Madeira since 1776. I like 1922 better than 1875. 1840 was too acidic. I have not yet opened my 1908s.

Kent_Comley · July 20, 2021, 1:49am

Here’s a curve ball - best vintage around the globe is 1990.

Howard_Cooper · July 20, 2021, 12:46pm

Will 2019 be giving it a run for its money? Great in Germany. Reportedly great in Bordeaux and Burgundy. Have not heard that much about the vintage in other regions.

Dav3_Dyr0ff · July 20, 2021, 1:02pm

I agree with 1990 around the world. It’s probably also first for Tuscany (maybe 1999), though I wasn’t buying wine when the 1985s were released so I haven’t tasted them nearly as widely.

The answer for NR is to cheat and say 1978.

G_Greenbaum · July 20, 2021, 2:57pm

For me 1997 bested 1999 in Tuscany.

G_Greenbaum · July 20, 2021, 3:00pm

Has there been a better succession of vintages than '88/'89/'90?

JViolini · July 20, 2021, 3:25pm

Define best vintage.

Ethan_Abraham · July 20, 2021, 3:49pm

What about 2010? Perhaps not the best ever in any region but near the top in every.

Brad_Baker · July 20, 2021, 4:57pm

I do not think that 1996 is the best Chamapgne vintage since 1980. Most hyped and initially loved for its potential on release, probably, but not the best. 1996 is too irregular and prone to Pinot problems. When it is great, it is great, but when it is not, it is really not. 1982 and 1988 are better (although some of the 1988s are getting a touch tired). 1995 is now probably the equal to 1996 - not as many spectacular 1995 wines, but far more even across the board and at an overall higher average level of quality. 2008 and 2012 are also tracking to be better than 1996 with 2009 having an outside shot a equaling/surpassing it one day too. The upcoming trio of 2018-2020 should be a fun one to follow over the next couple decades with 2019 being my early bet as having the best shot at being the best Champagne vintage sine 1980.

Arv_R · July 20, 2021, 5:19pm

Agreed, very hard to go wrong picking a 2010 from nearly any region.

Yao_C · July 20, 2021, 8:28pm

IIRC particularly elevated alcohol levels for right bank Bordeaux, which can be a problem if you’re sensitive to it. In fact, here is John Gilman on the topic of 2010 right bank. He doesn’t mince words:

(…)

I have little (read that as absolutely zero) hope that the 2010s on the Right Bank are going to age well, as I have found them patently unbalanced from day one in barrel and fully expect them to unravel and implode with bottle age. There are exceptions that are passably well-made in the face of very daunting challenges, but in general terms, the wines are too high in alcohol, overripe in aromatic and flavor profiles and have aggressive, green and unripe acidity that will never fully integrate in the wines over time. The lack of ripeness in the acids is readily recognizable to those of us who taste a lot of young German wines, but interestingly, almost none of the journalists I saw in the spring of 2011 in Bordeaux regularly taste German wines at all and had no clue what I was talking about when I discussed the lack of ripeness of the acids in the 2010 clarets. There are a few journalists from Germany and Switzerland that I see there every year that have a good background on German wines, but very few others at the annual En Primeur events, so you are talking about folks who really do not have much experience evaluating acids in young wines.

Then you have the question of tannins in the 2010s as well- the highest measured tannin levels in the history of Bordeaux mind you- and the Bordelais had to leave the grapes hanging out on the vines until the sugars reached dizzying levels in the hopes of getting the tannins to ripen up a bit. Whether they had sufficient time to really ripen the tannins remains to be seen, as I tasted an awful lot of wines that had a distinctly green edge of astringency to their (skin and seed) tannins, and which many tasters missed because of the enormous amount of youthful fruit in so many of the 2010s. What will be the place of those tannins in the wines down the road when the bloom of youthful fruit backs off a bit is an open question- they may dominate the wines. And mind, we are only talking about grape-derived tannins and not all the additional oak tannins lathered on the 2010s by those with a penchant for new wood. The tannins leech out of the new oak faster at higher alcohol levels, and the 2010s did yoeman’s work of adding wood tannins to their already copious amounts of skin and seed tannins in this vintage, so there are a very large number of astringent Right Bank wines out there from 2010. Many continue to hide their structural imbalances behind the fat fruit of the vintage, but how long will that last? As I said, there are a couple of handfuls of 2010s on the Right Bank that somehow managed to sidestep many of the potential pitfalls of the vintage, but it is certainly not even a significant majority of the 2010 Right Bank wines out there and it is a vintage fraught with peril today and only destined to get worse as time goes by- IMHO of course. Youthful fruit in wines, like youthful beauty, does not last the whole ride and I am not sure there is enough inner beauty in a great many of these 2010s to make them anything but great mistakes in the cellar twenty years from now.